Access your Google Music Library in Other Music Players [Android]

Google has a lot of cool apps, one of them being Google Music, their cloud music player storage and player app. While this is a great app, many of us have music players installed which we are partial to. However, there isn’t an easy way to access your Google Music library in other music players.

The Bridge

To gain access to your Google Music library in another player, you will need a rooted Android phone or tablet running 4.0 or higher. The test device I used was a Nexus 7 running the stock 4.2.2 ROM. You will also need a compatible music player and music already downloaded into your library. The app we are going to use to bridge your Google Music library to your music player is called GMusicFS, currently in beta.

When you click the download link, you will be downloading the app APK. You will need to move the APK file to your Android phone or tablet. I moved it to my Dropbox folder on my computer, let it sync and downloaded it onto my Nexus 7.

When GMusicFS is started, you will be asked to grant Super User permissions.

You will also need to tell GMusicFS which Google Account on your device has your music library.

Once you give the okay for GMusicFS to access your Google Music account, it will be scanned. The scan looks for the albums and artwork and the usual metadata. Depending on the size of your library, this can take a while. I had about 300 albums in mine and it took a couple of minutes for the initial scan.

In a nutshell, GMusicFS is making your Google Music accessible like it is a folder on your device. It’s like when you plug in an external drive to your computer or add in a microSD card to your phone or tablet. Each time you start your phone, GMusicFS is set by default to remount giving you access to your Google Music library.

The settings for GMusicFS offer some tweaks, but all of the defaults should work for most users.

Your Music Player

GMusicFS has been tested on some of the popular music players for Android. You may need to play with some of the settings by toggling them off and on to get the music player to see the music correctly. If you go to the Help tab in GMusicFS, you can see the settings you will need to change to get things working. If you use a player other than one they have listed, you can contact the developer to see if they have a solution for you.

For this demo, I used the N7 player. Initially I didn’t change any settings, and there was no music found. Once I toggled the Watch Filesystem option to Off in the Library tab then manually rescanned, everything worked great.

Using your favorite music player does not change. Over a Wi-Fi connection I didn’t have any buffering time or skipping due to the music being streamed slowly.

Final words

I know I have had some disdain for the Google Music player since I started uploading and buying music there, but if you have a rooted Android and use Google Music, this is an ideal solution.

Do you know of another solution to play your Google Music library in another player? Let us know below in the comments area.